ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13 (1976 FILM)

'''Assault on Precinct 13''' is a 1976 action/thriller movie, directed by John Carpenter, an homage to ''Rio Bravo'' by Howard Hawks.
'Tagline:'

★ ''L.A.'s deadliest street gang just declared war on the cops.''

Contents

Plot

Cast

Production notes

The "Ice Cream Truck" scene

Title misnomer

Critical reception and reassessment

Soundtrack

Track listing

Trivia

References

See also

External links

Plot

Set in Los Angeles, the action takes place in a rundown neighborhood known as the 'Anderson ghetto', a decaying area filled with street gangs and thugs. Precinct 9, Division 13 is an old police station about to close and running on a skeleton staff comprised only of officer Chaney and the station's two secretaries, Leigh and Julie. Lieutenant Ethan Bishop, a newly promoted L.A. police officer, is assigned to run the station for its last few hours of service.
Meanwhile, a man named Lawson is driving through the Anderson area with his young daughter, Kathy, when he stops to make a call at a public telephone booth. While Lawson is on the phone, one of the four leaders of the violent Street Thunder shoot Kathy and an ice-cream vendor, killing the little girl instantly and fatally wounding the man. With his dying breath, the ice-cream vendor tells Lawson that there is a gun under the ice-cream truck's dashboard. Taking the gun, Lawson pursues the four gang leaders and kills the one who shot his daughter, but is then chased by other street gang members. Seeking shelter, he runs into the nearly deserted police station. In shock, Lawson cannot communicate what is happening outside.
Around the same time, three prisoners are being transferred by bus from one penitentiary to another facility several hours away, when one prisoner becomes increasingly ill. Starker, the officer in charge of transporting the prisoners, decides to get medical assistance. He tells the bus driver to pull over at the nearest safe location, which happens to be Bishop's station. The prisoners, Napoleon Wilson (a convicted killer on his way to Death Row), Wells and the sick Caudell are put into the holding cells while Starker attempts to call a doctor. The telephone lines (cut by the gang members) suddenly go dead, and Starker, frustrated by his inability to get help, prepares to put the prisoners back on the bus.
To avenge the death of the gangster killed by Lawson, the street gang, armed with heavy weapons such as the Colt M16 and silencer pistols, suddenly open fire on the precinct. In a matter of seconds, they kill Chaney, the bus driver, Caudell, Starker and the two uniformed officers assigned to support Starker during the prisoner transfer. While bullets fly, Bishop rescues Wilson, who is chained to (and trapped under) Starker's body. Bishop then puts Wilson and Wells back into the holding cells.
The gang members, having already cut the telephone lines, then cut the station's electricity. Three gang members come forward to break a blood-filled "cholo" on the precinct's front steps, formally signifying that a siege is underway. Heavily outnumbered, without options, and once again under attack as the gang members resume shooting, Bishop sends Leigh down to the holding cells to release Wells and Wilson, who then take up arms. A battle rages as gang members launch a suicidal attack on the station in a crazed attempt to kill all inside. Wilson, Bishop, Wells and Leigh successfully defend the station, but Julie is gunned down in the ensuing chaos.
After the gun battle, the gang members quickly remove all evidence of the skirmish and appear to momentarily retreat. Wilson, Bishop, Leigh and Wells then decide that one person should try to sneak out of the station, hot-wire a car outside, and drive away to summon help. Since Leigh has a wounded arm, and Bishop does not know how to hot-wire a car, Wilson and Wells play a game of "potatoes" to decide who will go. Wells loses. Although Wells makes a valiant effort to accomplish his task, he is shot and killed by a gang member hiding in the back seat of the car.
As the gang members rally for a third time, Wilson, Leigh and Bishop go down to the basement, taking the still-catatonic Lawson with them, and stage a 'last stand'. This culminates in Bishop shooting an acetylene tank, which explodes violently, killing the gangsters inside the station. Police back-up arrives and secures the station, relieving the four survivors of the siege, Bishop, Leigh, Wilson and Lawson.

Cast

Actor	Role
Austin Stoker	Lt. Ethan Bishop
Darwin Joston	Napoleon Wilson
Laurie Zimmer	Leigh
Tony Burton	Wells
Nancy Loomis	Julie
Henry Brandon	Officer Chaney
Charles Cyphers	Starker
Kim Richards	Kathy
Martin West	Lawson
Peter Frankland	Caudell

Production notes

Working within the limitations of a $100,000 budget,^[1] Carpenter assembled a main cast that consisted mostly of experienced but relatively obscure actors. The two leads were Austin Stoker, who had appeared previously in science fiction, disaster and blaxploitation films, and Darwin Joston, who had worked primarily in television and was also Carpenter's next-door neighbor.^[2]

The "Ice Cream Truck" scene

The most infamous scene in the movie is the one in which a gang member deliberately shoots and kills a little girl standing near an ice-cream truck. The MPAA threatened to give the film an X-rating if the scene wasn't cut. Following the advice of his distributor, Carpenter gave the appearance of complying by cutting the scene from the copy he gave to the MPAA, but he distributed the film with the "ice cream truck" scene intact.^[3]

Title misnomer

Although the film's title is ''Assault on Precinct 13'', the action mainly takes place in a police station referred to as Precinct 9, Division 13, by Bishop's staff sergeant over the radio.
The film's distributor was responsible for the misnomer. John Carpenter originally called the film ''The Anderson Alamo'', and, at one point, he briefly changed the title to ''The Siege''.^[4] During post-production, however, the distributor rejected Carpenter's title in favor of the film's present name. The moniker "Precinct 13" was used in order to give the new title a more ominous tone.^[4]

Critical reception and reassessment

The film was originally released in the United States in 1976 to mixed critical reviews and unimpressive box office earnings. The following year, however, it was screened at the 21st London Film Festival, where it was one of the festival's best-received films and garnered tremendous critical and popular acclaim. The overwhelmingly positive British response to the film led to its critical and commercial success throughout Europe. Subsequently, the film underwent a reassessment by American critics and audiences, and it is now generally considered one of the best action films of the 1970s. John Carpenter has said that the British audiences immediately understood and enjoyed the film's similarities to American westerns, whereas American audiences were too familiar with the western genre to fully appreciate the movie at first.

Soundtrack

One of the film's stand out features is its influential score, composed and recorded by director John Carpenter. The combination of synthesizer hooks, electronic drones and drum machines set it apart from many other scores of the period and created a distinct style of minimalist electronic soundtrack for which Carpenter, and his films, would become associated. The score consists of two main themes; the main title theme, with its familiar synthesizer melody, and a slower more contemplative theme used in the film's more subdued scenes. Besides these two themes the soundtrack also features a series of ominous drones and primal drum patterns which often represented the anonymous gang gathering in the shadows.
Beyond its use in the film, the score is often cited as an influence on various electronic and hip hop artists with its main title theme being sampled by artists including Afrika Bambaataa, I-F, Dead Prez and Bomb the Bass, whose song "Megablast" featured a sample of the score and was used in the soundtrack to the video game Xenon 2 Megablast. A new cover of the theme called "Precinct 13" was released by Tape Recording Club in November 2006.
Despite this influence, except for a few compilation appearances, the film's score remained available only in bootleg form until 2003 when it was given an official release through the French Record Makers label, owned by electronic band Air who also consider the soundtrack to have had an influence on their music.

Track listing

#"Assault On Precinct 13 (Main Title)"
#"Napoleon Wilson"
#"Street Thunder"
#"Precinct 9 - Division 13"
#"Targets / Ice Cream Man On Edge"
#"Wrong Flavour"
#"Emergy Stop"
#"Lawson's Revenge"
#"Sanctuary"
#"Second Wave"
#"The Windows!"
#"Julie"
#"Well's Flight"
#"To The Basement"
#"Walking Out"
#"Assault On Precinct 13"

Trivia

★ In addition to writing, directing, and scoring the film, John Carpenter also edited it, but he used the pseudonym John T. Chance, the name of John Wayne's character in ''Rio Bravo'', for his editing credit. Carpenter also employed the John T. Chance pseudonym for his original version of ''The Anderson Alamo'' script, but he used his own name for the writing credit on the completed film.

References

1. IMDb.com Business Data for Assault on Precinct 13 (1976)
2. Q & A session with John Carpenter and Austin Stoker at American Cinematheque's 2002 John Carpenter retrospective, in the ''Assault on Precinct 13'' 2003 special edition DVD.
3. Q & A session with John Carpenter and Austin Stoker at American Cinematheque's 2002 John Carpenter retrospective, included in the 2003 ''Assault on Precinct 13'' special edition DVD.
4. Still Gallery feature, included in the 2003 ''Assault on Precinct 13'' special edition DVD.
5. Still Gallery feature, included in the 2003 ''Assault on Precinct 13'' special edition DVD.

See also

★ 1976 in film

★ ''Assault on Precinct 13 (2005 movie)''

★ Austin Stoker

★ Darwin Joston

★ Napoleon Wilson

★ John Carpenter

★ Laurie Zimmer

★ ''The Nest'' (''Nid de guêpes'')

External links

★

★ http://www.theofficialjohncarpenter.com/pages/themovies/ap/apmm.html - Official John Carpenter website